Family matters for Daniels

INDIANAPOLIS — With speculation raging that the only thing standing between Mitch Daniels and a presidential bid are the objections of his wife, Cheri, the first couple of Indiana emphasized Thursday that the concerns of their four daughters are also at issue.

Talking separately to reporters after a sold-out state GOP dinner here that marked Cheri Daniels’s debut on the political stump, each brought up the impact a White House run would have on their 20-something girls and their husbands.

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“It’s not just me,” Cheri Daniels said. “I have four daughters and I have three sons-in-law and everybody has a voice.”

“You ought not underestimate the fact that there’s not one woman involved — there’s five,” Gov. Daniels said a few paces away from his wife in a hotel ballroom. “Everybody’s view matters with something like this because it would affect everyone.”

Asked directly if he wants to be president, the governor said: “I haven’t decided yet.”

He offered few clear clues to his intentions during a 20-minute speech to about 1,100 Indiana Republicans, but continued to indicate that he was reluctant about getting in the race.

“This whole business of running for national office — I’m not saying I won’t do it,” the governor said to applause, before continuing: “My friends know its never been any intention of mine. … I’d like to go to some quiet place where nobody could find me. Like Al Gore’s cable network.”

He offered no critique of President Barack Obama, as his would-be Republican presidential rivals regularly do, and even made a point of bragging that Hoosier Republicans, he said, don’t resort to gratuitous political shots

“The only red meat when we get together for dinner is on the menu,” Daniels said. “We are too busy building a much better state for our children and their children to bash anybody.”

Turning to his wife, however, the governor seemed to shed some light on their current deliberations by recounting a similar conversation they had eight years ago when he was considering a gubernatorial bid.

“It does not overstate the case to say that this was not her first choice,” he said of leaving his post as chief of the Bush White House’s Office of Management and Budget to come home for a statewide campaign.

But, he recalled telling Cheri at the time: “There is no rule book for this as far as I’m concerned.”

Cheri Daniels took this advice to heart, and has largely avoided politics during her husband’s two terms in office. That’s part of what made her appearance Thursday night as the keynote speaker of the state party’s annual spring dinner so remarkable.